the geography of nowhere, by james howard kunstler, was published in 1994. the book is a treatise on the architectural and cultural weaknesses of suburbia. he sees suburbia as the cultural and economic bankruptcy of american society, and states that we have lost a true sense of home and community. it's anti-globalization, anti-big business, and not without cause. i agree with most of what he says.
here are a couple of excerpts from the book, lifted from their larger context. i'm sharing them to provide a taste of his thesis, which still has relevancy.
"In 1992, there were 1,200,000 housing starts. It's a figure that ought to send chills up the spine of a reflective person because the housing starts do not represent newly minted towns, or anything describable as real or coherent communities. Rather, they represent monoculture tract developments of cookie-cutter bunkers on half-acre lots in far-flung suburbs, or else houses plopped down in isolation along country roads in what had been cornfields, pastures, or woods. In any case, one can rest assured that they will only add to the problems of our present economy and of American civilization. They will relate poorly to other things around them, they will eat up more countryside, and they will increase the public fiscal burden." (p. 147)i went to high school in just such a suburb. just a few years prior to my family moving there, where our house was there used to be farmland. now, there is house after house, and development after development for miles in each direction. all were very new, relatively speaking, and had no significant relation to one another. the only thing that connects them are wide roads, unsuitable to the many children and teenagers unless they are chauffeured by car from place to place. moving on, to another excerpt.
"The present solution to creating focal points in suburbia is the curvilinear street. Make a bend in a roadway of only a few degrees and you will close the vista. You can demonstrate this to yourself by looking through a two-foot lenght of hose and bending it: the view out the other end disappears. Closing the street vista with this gimmick provides a crude sort or psychological comfort, but affords nothing in the way of real visual interest. It merely protects someone from the depressing sight of all the tract houses lined up in a relentless row, leading to a vanishing point. On a typical curvilinear street the focal point changes as you move forward, but it is always just another house, not a library, a grocery store, or a theater, which are banished to other parts of town by zoning. From the traffic engineer's point of view, the curvilinear street has another side benefit: Cars can still move at speed with no problem--which is exactly what you shouldn't want in a place where children play." (p. 128)now back to my suburb. here is the view from above of the general area where my house was.
View Larger Map
look at all those curvilinear roads. a considerable portion--if not all--of these houses weren't around when kunstler wrote this book. and yet, it fits the mold he describes perfectly.
i enjoyed my life in the suburbs. despite all the rhetoric kunstler has in this book about how home life had deteriorated tragically, that wasn't my personal experience. but i agree that this type of expansion is no longer tenable in the long-term. in fact, it never was.
6 comments:
I haven't read this book, so my comments must be taken with that knowledge in mind.
It seems to me that Kunstler doesn't like suburbs because they're different. So what if the roads curve? Is that really so bad?
And what is his desired alternative? Big cities present just as many (and probably more) social and economic drains.
It's fine not to like suburbs, but I think that blaming them for cultural decay in America is overboard.
yes, kunstler doesn't like suburbs. in fact, the book is largely a rant (albeit a well-researched rant.)
i don't think that suburbs are different. in fact, i think they are all quite the same. that's one of the things that i think Kunstler and others don't like about them. i think one can say that suburbs deprive many resources from both the city and the country.
his desired alternative is something akin to "new urbanism," towns and cities focused on community, sustainability, and cultivation of local arts and commerce instead of the chain stores and restaurants everywhere.
yes, cities have their own issues. but they also allow people and businesses to be grouped together in cohesive communities instead of spread out (and only available by car) and dispersed as in the suburbs. another key aspect of the book is that the laws and ordinances in most places prohibit any other sort of development than what is seen throughout suburbia.
re: curvy streets, i just thought that that was an interesting point, and one that resonated w/ me personally. it's not a major point of the book, but one of many he makes regarding the aesthetics of architecture, and how our buildings no longer have a larger purpose or plan/layout.
remember in dr. martin's classes, when he talked about architecture? how towns used to be centered around a church? what are our towns, cities, and suburbs centered around now?
this is just my opinion, but does that at least partially answer your questions?
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm probably taking too much offense because I've spent a large portion of my life in rural areas and loved it.
Once again, I haven't read the book so maybe you can address this ... I understand his point about economic community - that's one of the things I love about Chicago. Each neighborhood is pretty much self-contained/supportive in economic terms. Everything I needed was in Lakeview, and it did give me a sense of community to say "I'm living in Lakeview."
But at the same time I feel that a feeling of community in a larger sense was lacking. People don't make eye contact or acknowledge each other on the street. Commuters look at you weird if you try to start a conversation on the bus. Things like that.
And I'm not saying it makes city life bad. I'm just saying that there are different ways to think of community that Kunstler may be overlooking.
curvilinear roads: their beginnings can be traced back to chicago (riverside, il) and to one of america's great architects (frederick law olmstead). olmstead thought the roads would place an emphasis on nature (as opposed to the commercial grid structure of city streets) and would also suggest a leisurely, unhurried way of life ("contemplativeness of happy tranquility").
i'm not defending or attacking anything here, but i just wanted to offer some history of curvilinear roads (i took "a history of the american city" a year ago with john c. teaford ... look him up on amazon; sadly he retired last year and is now emeritus, but he is--next to dr. mark smith--my favorite professor)
and also, as far as historiography goes, urban historians love to attack suburbs. this is nothing new. as teaford says, it's just an example of people falling too madly in love with the subject they study. he says at urban historian conferences that if a city increases in population that people will cheer and says it's rather silly. i haven't yet read it, but his "the american suburb: the basics" probably gives a very even-handed/fair-minded treatment of suburbs.
baddog,
interestingly, kunstler likes olmstead. and i do too! i read about his role in creating central park, the biltmore mansion, and the 1893 chicago world's fair. i picked this excerpt b/c i identified w/ it personally. it doesn't provide a good example of his whole thesis.
and he isn't necessarily an urban historian. he prefers small town life, and lived in one at the time he wrote this book, as far as i know.
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